Nearly 1 million Chinese tourists visit Russia visa-free in 2017

Group tourists from China and Russia can visit each other's country visa-free.

The visa-free tourist flow from China to Russia rose 23 percent year on year to 944,000 people in 2017, the Russian travel association "World without borders" said Tuesday.

A total of 1.24 million Chinese tourists visited Russia in the first nine months of 2017, it said in a statement.

Group tourists from China and Russia can visit each other's country visa-free.

According to the association, the most popular routes among Chinese tourists on the visa-free basis were Moscow and the second-largest city St. Petersburg, which attracted 52 percent of the visitors, followed by border regions and some parts of Siberia.

The number of Russians who visited China visa-free last year was 415,000, an increase of 20 percent from a year ago, it said, adding that most of them were residents of the bordering regions.